Action Research A Methodology for Change and Development

ACTION RESEARCH FOR ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 129
Project INTENT, as a project managed by NCET, should deliver what it had
promised.]
While I think that we went on to deal credibly and fairly comprehensively
with the requirements for a formal evaluation of Project INTENT, it
would have been much better if I had not been caught by surprise at their
expectations at this meeting. My somewhat strained relationships with
HMI also did little to help my pursuit of follow-up funding to roll out to all
other TEIs the INTENT model for IT development. Peter Avis and I spent a
considerable amount of time writing proposals to the DES for this ‘daughter
of INTENT’ but they were all finally rejected. However, knowing more of
policy making now than I did then, its rejection probably had more to do
with the then government’s desire to come up with a new eye-catching,
small-scale initiative as a vote winner (of exactly the type that INTENT had
been) rather than to fund the much larger expense of rolling out a tried and
tested model to all the TEIs in the country.
Project INTENT was funded because it was timely, capitalizing on a recommendation
in the Trotter Report that NCET should provide ITTEs with
support for staff development in IT, and catching the moment when CATE
had made IT a top priority in initial teacher education. A follow-up project
would not, by the same token, have been timely because it was seeking
funding just at the moment when CATE criteria for newly qualified teachers
had been changed, yet again, to remove the explicit focus on developing
competence in IT. An important lesson to be learnt from this is that
however potentially important a funded project may be it will only be
funded if it appears timely to the sponsors.